Anyone have chickens?

[shazapple]

On average I would buy 1 bag of feed and a bag of shavings per month, totaling somewhere around $20/month. I get 3 eggs per day, so somewhere around 90 eggs per month, meaning I'm spending close to $2.75/dozen. More expensive than grocery store eggs, and keep in mind this doesn't include time, coop cost, or other issues (sickness, egg loss, drop in production from age, etc).

Personally, I'm not doing it to save money. The eggs are much better, the chickens are highly entertaining, and most importantly I know how they've been treated and where my food come from.

Edit: on a side note, this shows how little farmers make off of eggs. At most they charge $3-4/dozen and they probably get better feed costs than me, but including their time means their profit is minimal. Makes you wonder how you can get eggs from the store for so cheap...

[Mick_VT]

I hate to say it - but it is economies of scale and at the low end factory farming. Round here our local coops sell small farmstead raised and home raised eggs for $4.99 a dozen. I dont know how much they pass through. You are right they taste so much better.

[clover]

Makes you wonder how you can get eggs from the store for so cheap...

My husband works at our state's department of agriculture, in part inspecting large factory farms. Even when they're on an enormous scale (we're talking a million layers), they're often making money because supermarkets are paying more for the eggs than they're selling them for. Staples like eggs, milk and bread get people in the door, and eggs are a common "loss leader." For example, Costco sells an 18-count egg carton and sells it at price that makes the per-egg price lower than a dozen. But it costs the egg processor more to set up the packing for the 18 count, so they actually charge more per egg. Costco takes a loss each time they sell one of those cartons of 18, but I imagine they make it up in spades when the same customer goes on to buy $200 worth of other stuff.

[shazapple]

We are doing 26 meat chickens this year, so I thought I would share my new and improved chicken coop. Last years setup wasn't moveable (resulting in a dead spot in the yard), it was difficult to access (for cleanup and refilling food), and it wasn't very weatherproof (we had a record setting hurricane come through and the chickens were not impressed).

I decided to build my coop with a 4x6 outdoor area and a 4x3 indoor area (I will have to build two of these). I wanted the chickens to have free access to grass, so the outdoor area has no wire on the bottom. The indoor area will serve as their overnight protection and holds their water, food, and heat lamp.

QomDBnE.jpg (237.4 KiB) Viewed 1752 times

The roof tarp is actually the packaging from my siding (reduce reuse recycle!). The biggest design flaw at the moment is that I don't have a lip to keep shavings in the indoor area. From new it could be built for $150, but since I reused some things i only spent half that. I plan on tracking my costs a bit more this year to see how it all works out.